On a summer's day nearly two decades ago, a young vivacious American girl met a prince in the picturesque Indian hill station of Darjeeling. The story of the young girl's engagement and wedding to the prince and her life in his exotic kingdom became a talking point all around the world.

The romance ended in 1980, when Hope Cooke, the Gyalmo of Sikkim, left her Chogyal for her native New York, and Sikkim became the 22nd state of the Indian Union.

It was only a matter of time that the former queen would write a book about her life, concentrating particularly on her Sikkim experience. The story of the American Gyalmo is the saga of the decline and fall of a kingdom: she came when Sikkim was at the cross-roads and left when it ceased to exist as a separate state. She brought to the conservative people a drive for change, but ultimately became a helpless witness of the death throes of a 300-year-old monarchy and the ruin of the man she loved.

Tragically, the fairy-tale romance of the girl from the West and the man from the East soon deteriorated. Cooke's disillusionment with her husband and his kingdom began early in their married life. It was only her determination to establish an independent Sikkim, free of Indian domination, that kept her going.

Time Change becomes more and more of a sharply written record and less of an autobiography as the problems grow: the tall towers of Manhattan, where Cooke grew up, are obliterated by a savage political drama, in which mighty India and tiny Sikkim are the main protagonists. The memoir also documents the various tensions that Cooke was a party to - the tension between the Chogyal and his Gyalmo, and between a king and his subjects.Tense Situation: For the first time the world has a detailed picture of how things appeared to the residents of the Gangtok Palace during the hectic months before the 1975 merger with India. There was a feeling of being under siege at the Palace as hostile demonstrators gathered at the Gangtok bazaar and gradually approached the Palace. Cooke is convinced that they are all hirelings brought in from Darjeeling and Kalimpong.

The preparations inside the Palace are described graphically: "There are guns all over the house. Rifles, their barrels broken, lie in each dining room chair. . . young men full of animal excitement, urgency, spring double-stepped up the stairs I hear the pounding boys go in and out of the cluttered room opening off the landing by our bathroom door and rummage through the room full of old presents, pictures, lampshades, suitcases, photographs, love letters, boxes of slides - and guns."

Naively, Cooke thinks that the world would rush to the aid of the Palace, if only they could get word outside: "Well at least it's good to know we've got a ham radio maybe we can get a message out on that. Karma looks at me angrily and then jerks his head at Chopra - 'Keep quiet!'"

The Chogyal with Cooke in state robes: a heady romance that fizzled out

Cooke disliked Indians in general but she particularly hated K. S. Bajpai, the Indian representative in Sikkim at the time of the civil strife. As the battle-lines were being drawn during the troubles, a battle of wits developed between the Palace and India House, each eyeing the other's move in a furious cat-and-mouse game.

Cooke captures a tense moment in the course of a dinner with Bajpai, when he expostulated: "What, Gyalmo? Are you saying I ever lied to you or lied about the recent events?" Getting out of his seat, standing taller and taller, his oval skull-white face peering down at me. Dark eyes getting large, furious. "What are you saying!" he screams.

Despite Bajpai's screams, Cooke is convinced that India annexed Sikkim. Describing the crucial April 1975 referendum, she says: "Ballot boxes were set up in the open air, with no enclosures. Illiterate peasants were terrorised and dragged from their homes to vote. Resident Indian businessmen, though not Sikkimese citizens, also voted.

Loudspeakers directly instructed voters to place their ballots in the pink box pro-merger, anti-Chogyal." Cooke also hints that the crown prince died in a manufactured 'accident'. As she puts it: "He was driving the palace car down to the gas station below Gangtok. On a road built for one-way traffic he was hit by a one-ton truck coming up from the unexpected direction there was no enquiry into the accident."Ambitious Queen: The Indian antipathy towards the royal family of Sikkim is understandable. The Chogyal seems to have deliberately set out to create a gap between Sikkim and India. He cultivated western contacts, sent his sons to Harrow and thought of himself as part of a European royal family.

It was Cooke's entry into his life that widened the gap: he was getting on well with the Indian Government before she became his queen. Cooke probably wanted to make a real royal out of him - and this ambition was viewed with an increasingly jaundiced eye by the Indians.

Although Time Change is very informative, it is silent on some delicate matters. Why did Cooke leave her husband in the lurch after the fall? Why did he try to commit suicide after her sudden departure, and why did she, when they were getting bored with each other and she was thinking of having an affair with the Indian general in Gangtok - "I am scared I'm going to allow myself to flirt with General X" - decide to stay on?

In the end, Cooke is seen as an extremely ambitious woman. As she puts it: "The best part of being Gyalmo is that it gives me structure, makes me carry out things - finish what I started." But in the final reckoning Cooke's contribution to Sikkim was minimal; as a friend told her: "Hope, for good or for bad, you've never been more than icing on the cake. It won't make one bit of difference to Sikkim whether you're there or not." When the Yankee queen went home, she left very little of herself behind.

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